LAST weekend marked the first time racers and spectators got their first real taste of the new and improved Heathcote Park Raceway, less than two months after new owner Lance Warren got the keys to the central Victorian drag strip.

Photos: Chris Thorogood

Lance and his crew had been working overtime since the start of the year, cleaning up and renovating both the track and the surrounding facilities in the first stages of a major overhaul for HPR.

No Excuses #3, run by Radial Life, was the first major event of a packed HPR schedule for 2021, with some big names and familiar Drag Challenge faces bringing home some great results in a field of 80 entrants.

No Excuses had previously been run at Ballarat Airport, which was a lot of fun – if challenging from a traction point of view.

DC regular Todd Foley hit the Heathcote track with a brand new twin-turbo LS combo in his VH Commodore, ending the day with a PB of 8.60@159mph on his final pass to win the 235 Radial class, as well as the Quickest Holden and Quickest Eight-Cylinder awards. Todd will be back at HPR in two weeks for Tunnel Vision’s King of the Street event, as well as his own Holden Nationals event later in March.

Jason Ruby’s S13 Silvia was another DC combatant lighting up the scorecards, with the quickest overall pass of the day to the tune of 8.15@167mph. Jason also won the AWD class and the Quickest Six-Cylinder award.

Kai McPhee’s seven-second VC is another DC regular, the Creswick Sausage’s turbo LS running a best of 8.62@165mph to win the 275 Radial class.

Other notables included Rhyan Sturzaker, who won Radial Outlaw in his 1980 Mazda RX-7, and Joshua Tuskin’s XW Falcon, which won Quickest Ford.

Jason Kenny’s VN made 600rwkW on the dyno the night before race day. Running the same 235 radials that the car wore at Drag Challenge 2019, LS1PWR ran mid-nines at Heathcote.

Daniel Barbary’s KC Centura is another Drag Challenge survivor. These days it is rocking a single-turbo LS1 on methanol and knocking on the eight-second zone.

Heathcote’s schedule only gets busier from here. Up next is Tunnel Vision’s King of the Street radial event on 6-7 March, shortly followed by the Holden Nationals on 27 March. It’s great to have quality racing back in Victoria!